Continuous bioprocessing is a method for pharmaceutical, chemical and biochemical production which limits the amount of intermediary steps and processes of more traditional methods. Traditional methods (such as batch processing) of pharmaceutical, chemical and biochemical production require moving batch fluids incrementally as a bolus from one process step to the next. Continuous bioprocessing is a means to decrease the frequency of mass fluidic transfer as well as reduce the separate equipment and space requirements. Generally, these processes involve controlled chemical or biological reactions occurring in a “bioreactor” which produce a specific product or products.
These reactions can take place from one day up to ninety days or longer. Traditional perfusion systems rely on devices to separate the cells from the supernatant media outside of the bioreactor; these include but are not limited to gravity settlers, sonic cell settlers, and centrifugation. More widely used forms of perfusion systems include but are not limited to alternating tangential flow filtration and tangential flow filtration. Such other devices require the cell containing fluid to be removed from the bioreactor where the cell separation occurs. This requires that the bioreactor will not contain all of the relevant fluids at any one point in time, and all of the fluid must transfer regularly between the bioreactor and a filtration apparatus.
Other known perfusion systems include spin filters. However, such systems are limited in their control capabilities, drivers, circuitry, etc.